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I want to introduce you all to a new project here at The Grand Alliance community.

This idea was brought to me by @Bruticus and after some discussion we felt that The Grand Alliance community would be an excellent home for this project.

Inq28 meets Age of Sigmar

Inq28 explores the lesser known aspects of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and has been a huge success, inspiring Blanchitsu articles, numerous blogs and countless incredible miniatures. Inq28 has become a term that describes not just a particular game but a whole approach to the hobby: an approach that puts creativity and imagination first.

AoS28 is an attempt to bring that same approach to the Nine Realms.

The Age of Sigmar has the potential for all sorts of stories, and just because we mainly see the epic, cinematic god-battles in the Games Workshop books doesn’t mean there aren’t other stories just out of frame, or just off the beaten path. That’s not to say your warband can’t include a few heroes, just that not every hero has to have a duel with Archaon.

What makes a model AoS28?

Conversions - The Age of Sigmar range contains loads of great miniatures but you’ll probably want to convert them in order to personalise them. This could be a kitbash or a complete resculpt. The important thing is to make the model yours.

Character is essential - you don’t have to write a full background story, but you’ll have to think about your character’s personality, they aren’t just pieces on a gaming board: what are their motivations? How have they survived the Chaos apocalypse? What do they think about the return of Sigmar? What secrets do they have?

Extra grimdark - Age of Sigmar has a distinctive, vibrant style, but there is a lot of darkness that is waiting to be explored. You think 40k has a monopoly on grimdark? The Nine Realms were conquered by Chaos, we are only just beginning to learn about the horrors that were unleashed.

What rules can I use?

We’ll be supporting the Hinterlands rules for AoS28, however your warband could be designed with games of Silver Tower, Mordheim, Realm of Chaos, Frostgrave or countless others in mind - or not for gaming with at all. The focus should be to make models you think are cool, rather than being constrained by points costs or restrictions.

How do I join in?

You’ll need to make a warband - probably between 2 and 8 models - led by a hero. The warband can be based on the theme below, or can be anything else you want to make.

Start a blog on www.tga.community and add the tag ‘aos28’.

Use the hashtag #aos28 on instagram and twitter.

Or if you have a blog already, let people know where to find it by posting your updates in the AoS28 thread on tga.community or by emailing aos28@exprofundis.com

If you don’t want to make a miniature or two, you could join in by writing stories or making art.

What comes next?

Over the next few months we’ll be showcasing all the best AoS28 models and warbands from any participating blog, as well as our own warbands. We’ll track what everyone is doing with Work in Progress photos and then final photographs in a few months.

There is no real deadline, because AoS28 is an ongoing thing. But we will roll out a new theme every few months, along with a wrap up of everything so far.

In addition there will be a new edition of Hinterlands dealing with AoS28 specifically, posts about background stories and ideas and possibly even gaming events at Warhammer World.

I need some ideas

Without many background or art books to draw inspiration from it might seem more difficult to come up with Age of Sigmar concepts than it is with Warhammer 40k. Age of Sigmar is often regarded as high fantasy, and you may feel that things need to fit this style in order to be suitable, but really you have a free reign to do whatever you can imagine: with infinite realms there are very few limits to what is acceptable. Like Warhammer 40k, Age of Sigmar has room for all sorts of stories of all sorts of genres. You are free to make whatever you want to make, but if you are stuck there is a theme you could try:

AoS28: Witch Hunters

The gates of Azyrheim are open and the Stormcast are unleashed on the Nine Realms. Cities and fortresses, thought lost forever are rediscovered. Lines of communication are rebuilt. And along with the Stormcast there are also other emissaries of Sigmar’s new world order. These Witch Hunters are tasked with rooting out corruption within the so-called Free Cities and the lost tribes, where mortals claim they have managed to resist the apocalypse. They seek the truth of these claims, and hunt the deceivers, betrayers and abominations.

Some travel in disguise and infiltrate the Free Cities, rooting out the corruption where it may otherwise go unnoticed. Some arrive at the city gates at the head of a punitive force, demanding tribute in Sigmar’s name. There are stories of tribes that claim to have escaped the taint of Chaos being put to the sword during these witch hunts. And there are stories of Sigmar’s agents themselves falling foul of the taint of Chaos and instead spreading the very corruption they profess to seek out.

The Shadowblades of the Seven Severed Fingers Cabal use assassins that travel through the Chaos wastes unnoticed, cloaked in the hides of daemons. They fight the horror of Chaos with horror of their own, and are able to strike fear into the blackest of hearts.

The Bitterlight Guild of Azyrheim use blinding, excoriating magic to interrogate those they suspect of corruption, stripping away lies and flesh until only truth remains. Their agents are said to be pure and incorruptable by some, and perverse sadists by others.

The childlike Oracle of Shyish can taste the taint of Chaos in the blood of men and women. Under the watchful eye of her immobile, silent Stormcast guardian, thousands of pilgrims bring her offerings in a hope to prove their purity.

The Knight-Venator Calliostro, tasked with finding tribes that had resisted the hordes of the Blood God, instead came across a Slaughterpriest who claimed to have been cured of the madness of Khorne when he pierced his own skull. The pair formed an unlikely alliance, but so far have been unable to replicate the accidental trepanation, despite the accuracy of the Venator’s arrows and an unending tide of test subjects.

The aquatic Duaradin fortress of Deepthunder has held out against the apocalypse since time immemorial. Under near constant attack, the citizens seal themselves in their hold and flood the city using ingenious mechanical walls and pumps, drowning any invaders. But emmissaries sent to the fortress noticed with some alarm that the barnacles that can be found all across Deepthunder can also be found on the skin of the sallow-eyed, secretive Duaradin that live there.

Eager to establish new alliances in the wake of Sigmar’s return, the crippled Vampire diplomat Malapraktor set out in his iron carriage, a ruinous steam-powered contraption. The vampire’s diligence in finding those whose blood is tainted by Chaos is perhaps unsurpassed by any other, but his manner of creating converts to his cause is more forceful than most.

The Shaii’ik tribe lived unseen by the scrying eyes of Tzeentch, worshipping a frail, masterless daemon. The entity granted them all invisibility from Chaos so long as they protected it in kind. When ambassadors from Azyrheim encountered the tribe the sight of the withered daemon sickened them, and they burned it. After some deliberation, they burned the tribe too.

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Yes, yes to multiple warbands! I've already started alt Skaven and Stormcast stuff...and once the Steamhead Duardin hit, I'll be going full force! Though I do want to do some tech inspired Goblin stuff too...

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I've been involved with Inq28 for a long time, and my favourite part of White Dwarf every month is the Blanchitsu section. But I'm also hugely interested in the Age of Sigmar and I think there is a lot of potential in the setting for introducing some of what makes Inq28 so much fun: the conversions, the stories, the shades of grey and the grimdark.

I know some of you are doing this sort of thing already, but for those of you looking for an excuse to get started with warbands and alternative takes on the Nine Realms then hopefully this is the place for you.

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I've been involved with Inq28 for a long time, and my favourite part of White Dwarf every month is the Blanchitsu section. But I'm also hugely interested in the Age of Sigmar and I think there is a lot of potential in the setting for introducing some of what makes Inq28 so much fun: the conversions, the stories, the shades of grey and the grimdark.

I know some of you are doing this sort of thing already, but for those of you looking for an excuse to get started with warbands and alternative takes on the Nine Realms then hopefully this is the place for you.

Ive expressed my interest in this project already and am already working on some warband ideas. Looking forward to seeing what people come up with!

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I love this idea, bit worried my conversion skills won't be up to scratch. I'd like to give it a go though!

You don't have to convert, but in my opinion it's a pretty easy skill these days - you don't have to do anything fancy, a simple headswap can make a huge difference. Like those Sylvaneth Spite Revenants for example - they have really cool heads that could easily be stuck on a Stormcast body to make some sort of Vampire Stormcast. Takes no skill, just an eye for bits and some imagination for a back story.

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I've been saying the exact same thing recently and I'm in the middle of converting up a warband for hinterlands. AOS is a setting with limitless potential for so many amazing atmospheric stories, and the rules support telling them.

So far I have my questing knight to go with my dark marsh wardens, and my brothers of the tempered host .

Need to photograph my with hunter and the wizard I'm building right now.

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Great, thanks, now I just have to try and pin myself down to one force.... but which one..... hmm...

Not if you don't want to. Your warband could consist of models from all Grand Alliances and factions. If you use the Hinterlands rules there is some leeway allowed for this in the AoS28 expansion. If you don't use rules then do whatever is cool. Personally I like the idea of a 'friendly' Orruk working as muscle for a human witch hunter.

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Yeah this stuff looks really cool. Do you have a blog anywhere with backgrounds or stories? Looks like you have a whole thing going on.

There are a couple of us collaborating for a game later in the year. It's been a blast exploring our own little world. Not sure what we're gonna do for a web presence, but we're gonna put something together. Here's a little intro:

“Quiet, child,” the old man said.“Quiet your thoughts and look ye to the north.

“There, across the inkblot inlet, you see? The tower rises far into the heavens, where the Gods themselves once lived.There you must never go, child.A darkness has been descended upon it for thousands of years.There, do ye see the light that flickers from within it? Even here, we all see it.

“Your friends are right when they tell you it is daemon-breath.When the Ancients built their buildings, they built them too tall and big, child.They entrusted the spire buildings to machine spirits and gave them free reign, and they built metal monsters that ran from their silvery spires to the lands and dug up the Favors of the Aunts.They kept digging, child.

“And when there was nothing left to dig, when the Favors of the Aunts were nought but slipper eelfins, they sent their metal monsters to dig more, and gave them machine spirits as well.And those spirits, as we all know, child, became daemon-borne.

“That’s what that light is, child.That is the daemon-hole.When the Ancients had crushed the world, the Gods came down into that tower, child, and they lived there for a thousand years, deciding what would become of the Ancients.Every night they feasted, child, but they had no seas the way we do now, child.They feasted on the spirits that the Ancients had put into their machines.And the Gods became mad.

“They flooded the world, child.Back then, water was slippery and blue, and it spread forth from the Tower, the Daemon-Spire, rushing and roaring like wind through the tunnels of the float-caves.And they covered the earth in it, child.The Ancients were not strong the way we are, were not strong the way the Pellups are, or the Fishfolk, or the Stitchmen or the Claude’s Kin or even the Cave Scuttlers.They were weak, child.Their food and clothing came from the land, and their machines had used up everything on the land.So when the Godflood hit them, they all died.They could not breathe water like Clan Kerry, and their boats were given the same machine spirits the Gods ate.They died, child.The Ancients died.

“And the Gods wept, child.They wept because they knew what they had done was right, and they wept because they knew that those same spirits the Ancients had given the machines now bore daemons, and they wept because they knew that their very home was now haven to a Rip.And they wept because they were quite, quite mad.

“We are strong.Child, ye must hear me, and ye must look to the north at the Spire and the flicker of the daemon-hole and know that ye are strong, for ye are part of our clan.We came forth from the Godsflood, we dragged the Ancients’ scrap into Craft and Homesteads, we fish and clothe and wash ourselves in the inkblot seas.For a thousand years we have kept the daemon-hole at bay by not frolicking the way the Ancients did, by harnessing and enslaving the machine spirits and the daemon-borne.We are strong, child.

“But ye must never go across the inkblot sea, to the tower that rises far into the heavens.Child, there the Gods themselves once lived.”

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This looks interesting. Ill try and gey something done for this. Going by your idea suggestions I really like the idea. I have a Lord Castellant which is dying to be assembled and painted.

Quote

The childlike Oracle of Shyish can taste the taint of Chaos in the blood of men and women. Under the watchful eye of her immobile, silent Stormcast guardian, thousands of pilgrims bring her offerings in a hope to prove their purity.

Im thinking more Diorama rather than warband (Though I may link AoS28 into the campaign I'm running in April with a modified Hinterlands ruleset)

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Some great figures but remember the other goal is to get you thinking about background and story. Think of it like putting together a RPG group for Dungeons & Dragons. The Nine Realms are huge and you can claim any part as your own: invent a city or a guild or a family. It's not just a nameless Stormcast, he's an individual with a reason for having beat-up armour and hanging around with Orruks.